


The Ties That Bind

by Lost (Legendaerie)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, related au, the great crossposting of 2019, they have a similar hair colors so they're cousins AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 06:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Lost
Summary: AU where Drew and Wally are cousins. Slight crossover between games and anime, warning for some dark themes. Very slight Contestshipping.





	The Ties That Bind

"They've got a son about your age, Drew."

He doesn't do more than glance at his mother as he helps to set the table; the cool detachment in his eyes reflecting the sentiment in his heart. He didn't really look forward to meeting these relatives from Petalburg in the first place, and this new info more filled him with dread than anything else. If it's just adults then he could duck out after dinner and have some time by himself, watching TV in the basement or playing outside in the flower garden. But if they had someone else to entertain…

There go his plans for the evening.

Moments after he finishes, a knock is heard at the door and his father emerges from his study to get the door. Drew's mother bends down to his level and wipes invisible dirt from her son's face, then strips her apron off and joins her husband.

He trails them at a distance, close enough to be called and far away enough to not be underfoot, and watches the greetings in silence. Until his cousin comes into view, that is.

The other boy is quiet, pale, and carried in his mother's arms; when she sets him down he wobbles, like a toddler, but he's obviously a couple years older like Drew - as was the green tint to his hair. Resentment flares in him instantly. How dare everyone expect him to babysit such a fragile, useless boy? But he bites his tongue and says nothing, keeps his silence throughout the meal except to answer cursory questions, then slips away after he's eaten.

To his disdain, he's followed.

"Hey, you're– Drew, right? My cousin. I'm Wally."

Drew pauses on his way to the garden, only a few steps from the door - he wants to double back and lead Wally away from here, so he can enjoy it in peace, but Wally's already seen what lies beyond the glass door and gauzy white curtains.

"Oh, wow, what a pretty place! Can we go in?"

"There's wild Pokemon in there," he says dismissively, tossing his head a little and gauging the other's reaction.

But to his surprise, it only enthralls the boy, whose moss-green eyes light up. "Oh, really? I wanna see them!"

Drew sighs and leads them both into the moonlit garden. There's a clearly defined path of white stones leading around a small fountain, but it's the hedges beyond where the wild ones lurk. He holds out a hand quickly, and Wally goes silent as a Swellow swoops down to the fountain to drink.

"We're safe so long as we're not in their territory, right?"

"None of the Pokemon here ever stay long enough to set up a territory," Drew replies under his breath, wishing he'd come alone. The crumbled bread in his pocket feels useless, too little for them to share; so he digs down deep in his pants (and his soul) and hands the whole fistful to his cousin.

"Here," he says. "Try feeding it. Toss a bit of food near it."

"Like this?"

Wally tears off nearly half the chunk and throws it weakly at the Swellow. The bird Pokemon's sharp eye catches the movement, and it pecks the bread easily from the grass, snapping it up and swallowing with a few jerky movements. Then it eyes the two boys with something sharp, like aggression or hunger, and steps nearer.

Drew goes very still, but Wally doesn't take the hint and takes a step back. The Swellow advances with a curious caw, hopping forward - until his cousin trips, bread falling to the ground.

He leaps forward at almost the same moment as the Swellow, and they collide in midair over Wally's prone body. The Swellow gives a hissing, furious cry, snapping at Drew's ankles as he blocks the way to his cousin, one arm raised to protect his eyes. Then just as swiftly, the bird Pokemon is gone.

Drew gives the trampled bread a disgusted look, but Wally seems none the worse for his little adventure.

"Do you come out here a lot?"

"Yeah." Drew picks the bread up from the grass, rolling it as best as he can into a little ball, and placing it on the side of the fountain as a peace offering if the Swellow ever came back. "They're nice so long as you know how to treat them, you know."

"Oh, of course I know! I read about Pokemon all the time. I wanna be a trainer when I grow up!"

He gives his cousin a sidelong look.

"Really."

Wally smiles back, and it's like the stars glitter in his unevenly toothed grin. "Uh-huh! And travel the world and everything. What about you, Drew?"

"… I'm still thinking about it," he confesses. "No one in my family owns any Pokemon; the old estate owners are the ones who put this garden in, but we keep it pretty free of Pokemon. I don't know if I'd like to travel with them, really."

His mind flashes back to moments spent hidden in his room, under the bed reading Pokemon books in the dark as yet another argument raged outside the door. "But I know I wouldn't want to just make them fight all the time," Drew concludes after a moment's deliberation.

"Really? But they say that bonds are best forged through battles–"

"I said I don't want to battle Pokemon!"

He doesn't realize the own tone of his voice until it's too late, and immediately he softens it, kneeling down to be closer to Wally.

"I just want to find my own way for Pokemon, okay?"

Still a little shaken, Wally smiles back and offers his cousin a handshake. "Then maybe I'll follow your lead, okay?"

Drew smiles back, his first of the evening.

"I'd like that a lot."

 

* * *

 

 

He remembers to smile when he sees Wally two years later.

It's his parent's turn to visit, and while they complained about the trip the whole way there, as soon as they arrive his parents are all smiles even to each other. Drew is quietly ill at ease about the whole thing, but he's honestly pleased to see his cousin.

His hands are already in his pockets, feeling out his present, when he sees Wally's state.

Lying in bed, face half covered with a plastic mask and some tubes, blue eyes slide like oil on ice to meet shocked emerald ones.

Drew lets the present in his pocket drop. He'd known his cousin was sick and getting sicker, but…

"It's okay, Drew," Wally wheezes, ushering him closer. "It's not contagious or anything."

"I know," he lies easily and finds a place to sit on the bed easily - his cousin's body takes up so little room. "Does… does it hurt?"

Wally starts to shake his head, then thinks better of it. "Not really. A little. I'm more just… tired than anything else. What did you bring for me?"

Drew swallows, then pulls out the object he'd almost revealed earlier. He doesn't meet Wally's eyes when he hands over the Pokeball, because they both already know it's useless. There's no way that Wally can catch anything but a cold in his condition, and it hurts him to be the one to remind his cousin of this.

So he doesn't expect the thin fingers that close around his wrist, then he meets his cousin's eyes as Wally wraps Drew's fingers back around his gift.

"Keep it. Catch your partner with it. Travel the world until I can catch up to you."

"But–" Quickly he schools his expression back into calm, or at least stoicism. "I… I'm not supposed to catch a Pokemon. My parents don't want me to leave."

"Don't let them hold you back, Drew. If you want to go… then you should go. At least you _can_ leave, right?"

He nods, tightly. "I'll get a Roselia, just like the ones they used to have in the garden. And I'll find a new way of training, and then… I'll come back here," and he lays his hand on Wally's so that they're both gripping the ball tightly. "And I'll teach you."

His cousin smiles behind the mask, laughs weakly, coughs heavily until the smile slips off his face and their family joins them. Drew slips the Pokeball back into his pocket and retreats.

It's been ages since he last cried, and he doesn't really remember how to stop. Drew wipes the damp off his face with the back of his hand, sniffles and swallows. If Wally had been the one in the ring, Roselia wouldn't have lost. It's Wally who knows everything about types and Pokemon, Wally who's always wanted to battle. Drew just wanted to appeal, to show off his partner to everyone, but he can't do that if he can't fight.

"You all right, kid?"

It's the winner - a slender, pink haired young woman with a warm smile that contrasted with her frosty Lapras. Drew looks up, then away. He doesn't really want to talk to her.

"You know, you did great out there."

She lays her hand on his shoulder - he flinches, and she retracts it instantly, but sits down on the bench beside him anyway. It's getting late and cold, but he doesn't want to go just yet so he stays.

His voice cracks awkwardly in the middle as he coughs out a reply. "You don't have to… to try to make me feel better, you know. I don't need your pity."

"What about my friendship, then?"

He shakes his head.

"Rivalry, then? Come on, we can battle sometime before the next Contest, give you a bit more practice–"

"I don't like battling. I don't like seeing–" he thinks of his parents back home, changes his tone. "I don't like seeing Pokemon get hurt."

She's quiet for a moment, then he hears the smile in her voice.

"Then, get better. Get strong enough that you don't lose again. Roselia seemed to enjoy itself out there… And just because Pokemon fight, it doesn't mean that they can't get along."

Drew gives her a curious look. "What do you mean?"

"If we fight, then we can learn from each other's points of view. If we fight, we can also learn more about ourselves, but only if we fight with open minds and hearts. And I think that there's a lot of room in your mind and your heart."

"You do?"

She nods, laces her fingers back behind her head, and leans back. And if he cries again, well, she doesn't seem to notice.

 

* * *

 

 

He sees Wally again after he wins his first Ribbon. It's a bit of a trip to Petalburg, and it's not really on his way, but he wants to show off the sleek blue ribbon as soon as possible. He'd considered mailing it to his cousin, but he'll need it if he wants to enter the Grand Festival; every one counts.

But the Wally he sees isn't the one he was expecting.

The sound of raised voices makes his stomach go queasy at the memory, but he steels his expression and knocks on the door anyway. Another relative, one he'd only met once before, answers the door.

"Oh? Who's this? It can't be– Faye's little boy, can it be?"

Drew nods, hesitating on the doorstep, then he locks eyes with Wally. He moves to step forward and greet his cousin, but instead has to retreat when Wally charges him at a run, grabbing at his elbow and tugging him away from the house. There's a little strength to it, which cheers Drew up somewhat, but his spurt of energy doesn't last long and both boys end up taking refuge in the shade of a massive Pecha tree just a few hundred feet away.

"They won't let me travel with a Pokemon," he pants, tear tracks still evident on his face as Drew bends over him, concerned as his cousin lays on his back in the soft grass, staring up at the sky. After a moment's deliberation, he lays down and joins the slightly younger boy, turning his attentions up to the endless blue.

"It matches my ribbon," Drew remarks offhandedly. Wally sniffles.

He withdraws the ribbon case from his pocket, unpinning the precious item with fumbling care, then holds it up against the sky. Clouds roll softly behind it, and the wind stirs the grass around them as they study the prize with care and in silence.

"Was it… hard?"

"You get used to battling after a while," he admits.

"No, I meant… Was it hard to leave home?"

Drew flinches a bit at the question - he thinks back of all the fighting, the cold remarks his parents would snipe across the breakfast table and the heated screams they'd hurl at each other when he was supposed to be in bed.

"Not really."

It's a lie, but only partly - it was hard, terrifying and lonely to leave, he felt like he'd just killed something and left it to die. But it had also been a while since that place had felt like home.

"I think I'm gonna do it too," Wally says. "Leave. Go on a journey anyway."

"Don't," he blurts. The moment he says it, he knows it's a mistake. But he tries anyway. "Don't run away. It's not much fun when you don't have anyone waiting for you back home."

He turns his head to the side. Wally is scowling at him.

"What do you mean, Drew?"

"I mean that– if you travel too, who am I going to show these ribbons off to, huh?" He tries for a smile, but it fails, and he lets his arms drop to his sides. Wally looks betrayed.

Drew turns his eyes back to the sky. Blue always was his favorite color.

"… Maybe for just a little while longer. I'll stay. But you better keep winning them, Drew."

 

* * *

 

 

It takes him a few weeks to finally get the mail back.

He reads it in the pouring rain, the paper already damaged from traveling so far and for so long. It's Wally's farewell letter. He'd left on his own anyway; some neighbor's kid had helped him catch a Ralts.

He sees the name Norman and wonders where he's heard it from.

After the Grand Festival, Drew heads to Verdanturf with a full box of ribbons and a girl's name in the back of his mind. He's got a hundred things to talk about, a few too many of them probably starting with the letter M, and he only hopes that Wally's there.

He's in luck.

Wanda lets him in, guides him to the back where Wally is coughing into his hand - he wipes off his mouth before he looks up, and his face breaks into a smile than Drew manages to return.

"Drew! It's been so long, ah ha ha. Have you forgotten how to smile without me?"

"Maybe," he admits, and it's more of a smirk by now if he's honest with himself. "I went really far in the Grand Festival–"

"I saw! You battled really well against Norman's daughter May. I'm sorry that no one really cheered for you when you won."

He shrugs, the memory bittersweet. "Eh, she needs the praise more than I do. Besides, you cheered for me, didn't you?"

Wally nods.

"That's all I need, then," and he pulls out his ribbon case. "Here, I won these along the way and I want you to have them."

"Really?" Wally's sky-blue eyes go big as dinner plates.

"Of course I do. I'm just gonna go out and win more, you know?" He pulls out the first, one the color of the ocean, of a girl's eyes. Drew catches himself on that train of thought and returns to the moment, handing the ribbon over to be examined in detail. "It was quite a battle, winning that one, you know."

"Really? Can you tell me the whole thing? Can I write it down?"

He blinks, taken by surprise, then grins and shrugs. "Sure. Grab something to write with, I guess, and I'll start whenever you're ready…"

It's just not possible to go all the way home after the Kanto Grand Festival, so he mails his ribbons away in a box along with a list of all the PokeCenter's he'll be near over the next couple weeks and asks Wally to call him when he gets the chance, so that they can catch up.

 

* * *

 

 

Drew doesn't hear back from him this time.

He sends the Johto Ribbons and the Cup to Verdanturf, with a forwarding address to Petalburg, along with a notebook filled with his descriptions of each battle for each ribbon. He's no poet, and his handwriting borders on the embarassing, but he still manages several pages for each one. The trashcan in the PokeCenter isn't filled with the ones he tore up, because he's afraid of anyone finding what he writes there - so he takes them outside and has Flygon burn them.

They're a little too personal for anyone to see. Even Wally. Especially Wally.

He doesn't give a list of his locations this time, since he's now getting to the point where his parents have started calling him again. Or his mother at least, urging him to come home and meet his 'new father' but not even Wally can bring him back to Hoenn just yet.

It's not for another couple years that he finally gets a letter back from Verdanturf, and the moment he's finished reading he's on Flygon's back, headed for the nearest ship that will take him home.

He's still too late for anything but the funeral.

It's been so long since he cried that he's forgotten how to start, and Drew sits through the service dry-eyed, expression carefully schooled into sadness while inside he's just screaming into an empty room.

The last true family tie he valued is being burned into a tiny pile of ashes, and he doesn't have a home to return to anymore.

He's sitting on Wally's childhood bed, going through his old ribbons and some pictures when he notices that his first one, the blue one, is missing. Drew frowns, tempted to ask someone - when a familiar voice breaks through his nostalgia.

"I thought I saw you at the funeral."

He'd tried to forget that she lived in Petalburg, ashamed that even in this state he still cares so keenly about her opinion, but he'd sworn he felt her eyes on him during the service. He certainly feels them on him now, and he closes the box with the ribbons.

"Wally's– he _was_ my cousin. On my mom's side. You helped him catch his Ralts, right?"

May nods, her eyes glassy. He tosses her the Pokeball.

"You should probably be the one to keep it, then."

"Drew," and her voice catches, sounds like she's crying. Sounds like she's scared. Of what? Of death? Of having to pass along her loved companions - or outlive them?

She sits beside him, too close, on his cousin's bed. "Are you all right?"

Ah, she's scared of him. Just like his mother was scared of his father. Drew doesn't look her in the eye, his skin crawling with her nearness, his features twisting into disgust at her tears. He doesn't need to cry. Doesn't remember how.

"I'm fine," he lies, but it catches in his throat. "Fine," he tries again - this time, it's muffled by her shoulder as she hugs him. She's soft and smells like fruit and he doesn't know if he ever even learned how to hug someone back but he tries anyway.

Even now, the thought crosses his mind that he could kiss her, here on Wally's bed. Drew tries to laugh but he's forgotten how.

"I was here just a couple days ago," May whispers into his shoulder. He's tempted to ask her to move since it tickles, but he stays silent. "We talked about Pokemon for a while. He… He asked to be buried with his badges and a blue contest ribbon. You gave him that ribbon, didn't you?"

He remembers everything now, and wraps his arms around his rival, his friend, and sobs into her shoulder.

The garden is cloaked in moonlight again, but it's so much smaller now that he's older.

His mother is asleep in her bedroom, wrapped in her sheets instead of the arms of her husband most likely. He's sorry for her in the abstract kind of sense as she lays dying, because he does love her. Or he did once, and it's this respect for a sensation now gone that he's returned for the last time to comfort her in her twilight years.

Drew tosses his Pokeball in the air, catching it again without releasing the Roserade inside. He's had the idea for a while now, eating away in the back of his mind like a virus that keeps him up at night. To release his partner here in the garden, to shut and lock the door and never come back. To hide in his parent's house and their books and their accomplishments until he too rots safe inside this castle. To make his own coffin.

But he can't do it. Maybe there's some kind of spell in this garden, one that he'd woven as a child as he'd dreamed a thousand tales inside the walls. He'd caught his Roserade here, too, and even as he stands here as an adult he can't let this go.

Because he'd promised someone long ago that he'd live for them both. And even if his own life is over, Wally still deserves to live on.

Drew takes in a breath, deep enough for the both of them.

And coughs.


End file.
